


Language of Averted Eyes

by fruitcakes



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Fluff, Kissing, M/M, My best attempt at fluff, dude idk just take it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 18:18:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11742537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fruitcakes/pseuds/fruitcakes
Summary: It's nearly impossible to drive home a point that doesn't make sense even to yourself. An illustration: how Wonwoo is both intrigued and terrified by romance; how he’s searching for it and absconding it at the same time.





	Language of Averted Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> This, my contribution to Fluff Fest. 
> 
> Happy one year anniversary to soonwoonet! Although I haven't been with you guys for that long, but it's still great to know for as long as I have. A nice, big garden ^^ 
> 
> Also, thank you to boo boo family. For being so good, so supportive. For listening to all my rants. L*ve you guys. A lot.

It's not fun—being a walking, talking contradiction. If anything, it's an inconvenience, because you're perpetually stuck in an ugly middle position.

Over the years Wonwoo has learnt to deal with it slowly, steadily. Seokmin, his friend and a psychology student told him he does something called ‘cognitive dissonance’. What that means and whether it has positive or negative connotations, Wonwoo doesn't know. He also couldn't possibly care less; Seokmin doesn't have a lot of credibility.

For the most part, it wasn't a cause of concern. It’s just something that _was_.

That is, until a very stubborn (‘ _please Wonwoo, I'm resolute_ ’) boy upturned any and all order in his life and leeched (‘ _you're dramatic_ ’) all semblance of his peace of mind. He bred so much chaos that even if Wonwoo tried his best, he would never be able to rid himself of its vestiges.

Soonyoung and the impact he had on Wonwoo was akin to a passenger plane crashing into a little house. And the way he became a constant presence, a haunting apparition, was much like a pizza on the roof—no one knows how it got there.

Here's the catch; Wonwoo _knows_.

Their friends call it the ‘Soonyoung Conundrum’. Count on them to blow things out of proportion (reason #3 why none of them got into the architecture programme). To this date, they puzzle over how Soonyoung weedled his way through the fortification Wonwoo had put up around himself. They think it was a smooth, effortless transition. Of course, Soonyoung and Wonwoo both know it was anything but.

It's nearly impossible to drive home a point that doesn't make sense even to yourself. An illustration: how Wonwoo is both intrigued and terrified by romance; how he’s searching for it and absconding it at the same time.

This is where Hurricane Soonyoung came in, with a burning conviction to _have_ Wonwoo. His pursuit of the boy, juvenile at first, became a running joke among their classmates, Wonwoo’s fleeing from it adding another dimension.

For some very indecipherable reason, feelings were added to the playfulness, while the back-and-forth went on.

And went on it did. Relentlessly, like a tug of war, till Wonwoo didn't know which team he was on.

If it hadn't been for Soonyoung’s magnetic personality pulling him in, Wonwoo thinks the gaze would have done the job. And if all went to waste, his kisses would certainly have pinned Wonwoo down effortlessly, just the way they do now. He's beguiling.

And Wonwoo? He was so eager to please, so desperate to match Soonyoung’s pace that he often felt himself unravelling under the nebulous thrill of having something you don't rightly own. In effect, this meant that their discovery of each other was impatient, and that they spent an indefinite amount of time in the cloudy dreamland of Soonyoung’s bed, wrapped up in gauzy sheets—and in each other.

An excerpt from an afternoon titled ‘Some European Town’: July heat, characteristically ruthless, had confined them to their room, seeking solace in the soothing hum of the air conditioner. They turned the temperature down to a freezing low in order to create idle cuddle conditions.

“What do you wanna do when you're old and wrinkly?” Soonyoung asked, lazily tracing Wonwoo’s jaw with his lips. He loves doing that for some reason, mapping Wonwoo's body with his lips.

“Move to some small European town, adopt a dog and open a cafe,” Wonwoo said instantly because he had already thought this through.

Soonyoung hummed, then heaved himself up to lie down on Wonwoo completely, eliciting an _oomf_ from the lanky boy. Perching his chin on Wonwoo's sternum, and with confidence Wonwoo cannot even fathom, he asked, “and I'm not in the picture?”

There was never a question of “moving too fast” in their case because their pace was glacial. Their relationship regressed more than progressed, a pattern that can be accredited to Wonwoo's fear of… _the unknown._

(Even now, Wonwoo can draw from memory the sight of Soonyoung rolling his eyes at the use of the melodramatic phrase.)

Their friends, by way of teasing, call him ‘Wonwoo’s Soonyoung’ as if he belonged to the boy, when all he really did was ensure that a good portion of Wonwoo belonged to him. There is no ledger of the seconds that he stole from Wonwoo in the form of kisses while he was studying, the hours he stole from his sleep just so they could talk about everything under the moon—Wonwoo will never get them back.

An attempt at bookkeeping: “Soonyoung, this is the sixth time,” Wonwoo said with a sigh. Soonyoung had barged into his room for the sixth time that evening, to play with the strands of his hair and stare at him, while he attempted to finish an assignment.

“I’m not bothering you,” he asserted with confidence, chin raised high and defiant.

“Yes you are!” Wonwoo replied indignantly, flinging a pen at his chest. “You're distracting me!”

“With what?”

“Your fucking shorts.”

Wonwoo will never get back the grade points he lost because he didn't turn in that assignment on time. That is one credit he is willing to write off.

What Wonwoo can't possible ignore though, is how carefree Soonyoung made him. Pre-Soonyoung era, Wonwoo would never have considered walking out of the house in a very crumpled white shirt, jean shorts and bed hair. Post-Soonyoung, that's exactly how he went out to meet Seulgi, because they spent too long in bed looking at pictures from dinner last night, leaving Wonwoo no time to get dressed properly.

On seeing the state of him, Seulgi raised one perfect eyebrow and looked him up and down in silent question.

“Do I wanna know?” she asked, arms crossed.

“Maybe,” Wonwoo said.

“What's he like?”

When faced with that question, Wonwoo realised he didn't have a real answer to it. And for some reason, that became a cause of vexation to him.

After much deliberation, Wonwoo concluded that Soonyoung is like a poem. Not in the sense that he is expressive, occasionally poignant and always beautiful (he is), but in the way that he cannot be summarised. There's no one word, or sentence, or any one thing that encompasses his essence.

Soonyoung is everything that he is—the looks, the thoughts, the walk and the talk. Take anything away, and it'll never be the same.

In light of this, Wonwoo realised he was in too deep. No sane person compares another to _a fucking poem_. But by this point, Wonwoo’s disquietude had long since morphed into a blinding frenzy.

Evidence, as found on the evening of November the 27th: the windows being frosted over called for, in a very logical fashion, steaming hot mugs of cocoa topped with cream. At least, according to Soonyoung that is ‘the natural progression of things’.

Perched on the counter, clothed in silence, they drank their hot chocolate. Smacking his lips and looking sated, Soonyoung smiled at Wonwoo. Just a little thing, just a warm little thing.

The natural progression of things here, was for Wonwoo to kiss Soonyoung. So he did, unwittingly chasing the remnants of the sweet and bitter undertones of chocolate.

Caught unaware, Soonyoung was unresponsive for a good few seconds and reciprocated hesitantly, as if skeptical.

With every slip and slide of their lips, the frost outside seemed to melt into oblivion, the heat building till Wonwoo could be fooled into thinking it was March. Unbidden, Soonyoung’s name fell from his lips. “I-” he stopped, reconsidered, struggled and made another endeavour, “Soonyoung, I–”

There's a world in Wonwoo's head that doesn't belong in the words of his language. His feelings for Soonyoung, and consequently their magnitude and intensity, exist there. Wonwoo was reluctant to articulate the abstraction.

(Because Jihoon, who studies Literature, once told him ‘ _les_ _belles infidèles_ ’—translations can either be beautiful or faithful.)

Yet, he still yearned to say it all the same.

Wonwoo wondered why he cannot reconcile the facets of his personalities, why all his thoughts must be leagues apart and why words mean so much.

There's only so much that could be conveyed with wide, giddy smiles across the table at dinner. Meaningful as they were, they didn't quite suffice and got lost in the din of twenty people talking at once.

Imagine a glass bottle with a cork stopper inside Wonwoo—that's where he keeps all his disconcerting, vulnerable thoughts compressed and suppressed, so they don't spill like milk.

But reduction in volume (causes an increase in pressure) and with the advent of Soonyoung, Wonwoo suddenly had a lot to handle; it was bound to blow up in his face like an over-inflated balloon.

Blow up it did, right when the skies opened up to pour down _oceans_ on them. Them having one umbrella, held by Soonyoung at an angle that shielded mostly Wonwoo, meant he himself got soaked to the bone.

Back at his apartment, Soonyoung and Wonwoo squatted in front of the heater, rubbing their palms for smidgens of warmth. In an inexplicable turn of events, Wonwoo found himself staring at Soonyoung shivering under the yellow lighting of his bedroom, letting his eyes wander along all the shadows and highlights on his skin, leading ultimately to the tragic surrendering of his heart. This was it—the last straw.

He leaned in and kissed Soonyoung, pulling him closer in one swift movement—cold against cold against cold. Nothing could sway a man on a mission though, as Wonwoo insistently sought the vague idea of being satiated in the lines and curves of Soonyoung’s lips. There was much ground to be conquered, so he adopted the policy of _divide_ _et_ _impera_. Fragment by fragment of skin, Wonwoo imprinted his adoration with gentle presses of lips to supple skin, and gentler touches of hands.

Out of breath and just minutely out of his mind, Wonwoo whispered, “what's this?”

Wonwoo talks like a fucking modern artist sometimes, thin ideas thrown in the air, open to interpretation. And Soonyoung is, by this point, so finely attuned to this habit that his conjectures are now always spot-on.

“Let me introduce you to this concept. It's called ‘being in love’,” he said, laughing lightly, but not condescendingly.

Wonwoo accepted the idea of _being_ _in_ _love_ , being forced out of the depths of his dictionary and into his habits, just as he accepted the alterations Soonyoung brought about to his sensibilities and just as he accepted all of Soonyoung’s idiosyncrasies.

Here, in relation to Soonyoung, the cynic and the romantic alike are driven to a tight little corner where, momentarily, neither matters, where the rest of Wonwoo is free to simply _be_. And where he is free to love Soonyoung, elementary as that.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I now think I am eligible to run for the post of President of Projection Club. Leave a comment if you support.


End file.
